1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a rubbing-cloth cleaning apparatus capable of efficiently removing piles from a rubbing-cloth used to rub an alignment film.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
An information processing device that can quickly process a great amount of data, and a display apparatus that displays the data processed by the information processing device to create an image are rapidly being developed.
A liquid crystal display (LCD) device, which is a representative display device, includes liquid crystal molecules. The liquid crystal molecules change their orientations in response to an electric field. The changing molecular arrangements result in optical characteristics such as variable light transmittance indices.
The LCD device may include a thin film transistor (TFT) substrate, a color filter substrate, and a liquid crystal (LC) layer. The LC layer includes liquid crystal molecules.
The thin film transistor substrate and the color filter substrate of the LCD device may include an alignment film for aligning the liquid crystal molecules in a predetermined direction.
Alignment of the liquid crystal molecules in the predetermined direction may be carried out by a rubbing process. The rubbing process may include an attachment process for attaching a rubbing-cloth having piles onto a surface of a rubbing roller, and a contacting process for contacting the rubbing-cloth to the surface of the alignment film to align polymer chains of the alignment film in the predetermined direction.
However, when the rubbing-cloth is cut out from a fabric, piles of the rubbing-cloth are undesirably cut off together from the fabric so that a quantity of particles is disposed on the rubbing-cloth. The particles disposed on the rubbing-cloth may cause undesirable scratches on the alignment film.
In order to prevent such undesired scratching of the alignment film caused by the particles disposed on the rubbing-cloth, the particles are removed from the rubbing-cloth.
However, since the particles are very small in size, it is difficult to completely remove such piles from the rubbing-cloth, and it takes a long time to remove the piles from the rubbing-cloth.